Search is coming to beorg

November 8, 2018

The next major feature being introduced into beorg is the ability to search your files. It will be available from the agenda and TODO tab. to allow quick search and filtering of all your headlines, whether they are tasks, part of a document or used to help structure a project.

A simple syntax has been designed to narrow down searches without needing to navigate a complex UI. Here are some examples of searches:

friday meeting : find all items which have both the words Friday and meeting in the item title

“friday meeting” : find all items which contain the phrase “friday meeting” in their title

t shopping : find all items which have the tag shopping

p a t work : all top priority items tagged with work

t school t nursery : all items which are either tagged with school or nursery

In addition to using the simple search syntax you can also use Scheme expressions. For example:

(string=? (item-file “inbox”)) : all items in the file inbox.org. This is a simple example which doesn’t warrant using Scheme - however may get you thinking what can be achieved.

Search will be available to all beorg users. For power users there is a beorg extension available to save searches. Saved searches can then be accessed from the bookmark icon in the search bar or on the TODO tab filter button. Searches will be synced via iCloud and available on all your devices. The in-app purchase will be $1.99 and will help fund further feature development in beorg.

Also coming in the next release of beorg is the ability to add tags to items. You’ll be able to do this from the item editor and in the outliner. Tags are a great way of creating your own GTD workflow when combined with saved searches. Tags will be available to all users as part of the core beorg app.